Genesis 41:44
וַיֹּאמֶר פַּרְעֹה אֶל־יוֹסֵף אֲנִי פַרְעֹה וּבִלְעָדֶיךָ לֹֽא־יָרִים אִישׁ אֶת־יָדוֹ וְאֶת־רַגְלוֹ בְּכָל־אֶרֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיֹּ֧אמֶר פַּרְעֹ֛ה אֶל־יוֹסֵ֖ף אֲנִ֣י פַרְעֹ֑ה וּבִלְעָדֶ֗יךָ לֹֽא־יָרִ֨ים אִ֧ישׁ אֶת־יָד֛וֹ וְאֶת־רַגְל֖וֹ בְּכָל־אֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃
εἶπεν δὲ Φαραὼ τῷ Ἰωσήφ Ἐγὼ Φαραώ· ἄνευ σοῦ οὐκ ἐξαρεῖ οὐθεὶς τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ πάσῃ γῇ Αἰγύπτου.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Dixit quoque rex ad Joseph: Ego sum Pharao: absque tuo imperio non movebit quisquam manum aut pedem in omni terra Ægypti.
Y el faraón le dijo a José: “Yo soy el faraón, pero sin tu permiso nadie levantará una mano ni moverá un pie en toda la tierra de Egipto”.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y dijo Faraón á José: Yo Faraón; y sin ti ninguno alzará su mano ni su pie en toda la tierra de Egipto.
And Pharaoh declared to Joseph, “ I am Pharaoh, but without your permission, no one in all the land of Egypt shall lift his hand or foot.”
✦ What the text says
Summary
Pharaoh addresses Joseph and declares his own royal title, then states that no one in Egypt will be able to act — represented by the idiom "lift hand or foot" — without Joseph's involvement. The verse grants Joseph a position of authority second only to Pharaoh himself.
Key words
- 'aNi ("I", H0589) — independent personal pronoun placed before the title Par'oh, giving emphatic self-identification: "I [am] Pharaoh."
- bil'aDeikha ("apart from you", H1107 + H9031) — a construct form with a 2nd person masculine singular suffix, meaning literally "apart from/without you," setting up the following negative clause as an exception tied to Joseph.
- yaRim ("he will lift up", H7311A) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular; the hiphil stem indicates causing an action ("cause to rise/lift"), and the imperfect aspect marks an ongoing or future prohibition rather than a single past event.
- 'ish ("anyone", H0376I) — masculine singular noun functioning here as an indefinite subject ("anyone/any man"), governed by the negation lo' ("not", H3808).
- yaD-o / ragL-o ("his hand" / "his foot", H3027G + H7272, each with suffix H9023) — both nouns appear in construct form with the 3rd person masculine singular suffix "his," forming the paired idiom "his hand and his foot."
What the text says
The verse opens with the narrative va-yoMer ("and he said," H0559), continuing the story sequence, followed by the subject Par'oh and the addressee marked by the preposition 'el ("to," H0413) plus Yosef. Pharaoh's speech begins with the pronoun 'aNi followed directly by the title Par'oh again — a nominal clause without a linking verb, as is standard in Biblical Hebrew, producing "I, Pharaoh."
The second clause is built on the negation lo' plus the hiphil imperfect yaRim, with 'ish as the grammatical subject of the negated verb. The two direct objects, yaDo ("his hand") and ragLo ("his foot"), are each marked by the object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) and appear in construct form with pronominal suffixes. The phrase bikhol-'Eretz Mitzrayim ("in all the land of Egypt," H3605 + H0776G + H4714G) closes the sentence, specifying the geographic scope of the restriction introduced by bil'aDeikha ("apart from you").
Differences between versions
The LXX renders the pair "hand and foot" (Hebrew yaDo + ragLo) with only τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ ("his hand"), omitting a term for "foot." The Vulgate preserves both terms with manum aut pedem ("hand or foot"), matching the Hebrew's two-part idiom, and adds the phrase absque tuo imperio ("apart from your command/authority"), an interpretive expansion not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew bil'aDeikha ("apart from you").
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.